by Richard Subber | May 18, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
our secret…
Cipher
I cannot choose the words.
I feel a pressure, desire,
to expose a thought entire.
It will not reveal itself,
nor change to parts.
It stays hidden, whole,
startling by degrees,
urgent in its fullness,
as I begin to understand.
It is my thought.
It is me, only me.
I tell you this, only you,
because you can understand.
June 26, 1995
Bethany Beach, DE
for Barb, my dearest one
* * * * * *
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Proud Tower
…a lot more than a history book…
by Barbara Tuchman
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | May 9, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
don’t be the show…
“Listen and connect with people,
don’t perform for them.”
from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2016
p. 76
Would your friends rather talk with you or watch Punch & Judy?
* * * * * *
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
–
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | May 7, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
the ugly bears…
Looky here
I didn’t mean to look at me.
I guess I wasn’t really having that much fun
in the Fun House.
What was I thinking when I ate cotton candy
as a kid and thought it was great?
The stuffed animals aren’t really cute…
where do they buy the ugly bears?
I was alone, I guess that says a lot…
who walks around alone in the Fun House?
Anyway, I passed the goofy, wavy mirror
and I guess I couldn’t help it,
I looked at it quick, I didn’t really stop,
I saw me, shattered, in layers, quivery,
even if I’d had a smile on my face
I’m not sure smiles show up in those things.
I kept walking, and I was thinking
about what I really look like,
and I guess I realized a mirror
probably never tells the whole story,
because the other you might have
a different point of view.
May 28, 2018
* * * * * *
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Myths of Tet
How people get killed by lies…
by Edwin E. Moïse
–
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | May 4, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reflections, Reviews of other poets
a bloomin’ wasteland, maybe…
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
American-British writer, popularly acclaimed as a great poet of the 20th century
At long last, I’ve tried T. S. Eliot’s poetry.
Maybe I’ll put Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot back on the shelf, and try again after a while.
Maybe not.
“…We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men…”
From “The Hollow Men,” 1925, by T. S. Eliot
It’s not that I mind Eliot’s deliberate contradictions so much. I’m willing to be provoked. I’m open to being tantalized. I’m ready to be pushed or pulled outside my comfort zone.
The sticky point for me, with Eliot’s poetry, is that I never seem to get to the point, or maybe I simply don’t get the point. When I get to the end of one of his longish poems, I’m really not sure where I started, or where I wandered, or where I arrived.
I find little coherence in Eliot’s words and phrases and passages.
I think of myself as a wordsmith, and I love the beauty of elegant phrases and shimmering, specific, steely, selective, stately, splendid words that tell a delicious story or evoke a bloom of emotion.
For my taste, T. S. Eliot’s poetry isn’t tasty, and it’s a bloomin’ wasteland of jumbled words, fractured images, and unfinished imaginations.
If you’re wondering where all the flowers have gone, don’t look for answers in Eliot’s work.
Source: T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1958), 101.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Fire in the Lake (book review)
you should have read it in 1972…
by Frances FitzGerald
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Apr 28, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Tidbits
getting closer…
“Years ago, a black southerner told me that in the South,
whites do not care how close blacks get
as long as they do not get too high,
but in the North, she said,
whites do not care how high blacks get
as long as they do not get too close.”
from:
The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family
by Bettye Kearse
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020
p. 72
Think about it—how much of this statement do you think is wrong?
* * * * * *
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
they were not satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Apr 25, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
there is more…
Wall
The wall stands high,
it has nowhere to go,
it heeds no future,
and it will not speak the past,
its dirty stones are mute,
they’re strong,
but they merely make the wall,
each alone is naught,
the wall entire is a simple part
of a simple world
that blocks my path,
and flaunts the other ways
that make a turn to left or right,
each an adventure,
more imagining,
a few steps
to futures in the beyond.
January 1, 2024
* * * * * *
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
* * * * * *
